There are a lot of great Android phones on the market right now, but two stand out: the Nexus 5 and the new HTC One. The Nexus 5 is Google's purest vision for Android, the One the platform's most mature and developed form. I desperately wish it took better pictures, and I'm reluctant to buy or recommend it until it does, but I like absolutely everything else. It's fast, long-lasting, does everything a phone should, and does it all with totally unparalleled class and style. From motion gestures to the Dot View case, it has genuinely new, genuinely useful features.

It may not outsell Samsung and the relentless marketing sure to follow the feature-rich Galaxy S5, but HTC executives say they don't care. They say they just want to build a phone for people who like nice things.

It's really hard to argue with that quality feel that last year's One had, and which this year's model improves. I think it's pretty much the only Android phone that can measure up to the iPhone in this department - and now, it also has an SD card slot.

I wonder if/when a smartphone maker is going to put 24/96 or higher DAC in their phone, and/or a hi-end amplifier stage and dedicated audio components?

Superior HD media specs coming out of a phone (if possible) would make me consider jumping platforms. It's rumored that Neil Young asked Apple repeatedly to go to higher audio specs in their iPods, and they have continually declined, so he ultimately launched pono to test his theory that people do want HD audio.

I would not be surprised by an Android knockoff of the pono player any day now, and if anyone anywhere moves up their standard audio specs we all win. We have been starving ourselves with crappy audio quality for some time now, and our society is suffering from it.

You win nothing believing computer compression programmers over audio professionals and musicians. Xiph.org verse every legendary record producer? I listen to real experts.

Thinking we can't hear anything more than 16/44 is BS. We hear WAY more than they can measure. Look up timbre and explain to me how digital audio lives without it.

You probably can't see the extra resolution in your TV or camera, either correct? Of course you can. Guess what -- your ears smoke your eyes in regards to sensitivity and spatial awareness.

See the latest story published in journal of science about how olfactory researches just determined that we can actually smell in 100x more detail than what they initially thought. Science is barely scratching the surface on our human senses.

But since we misunderstand our ears and there is so much bad science pushed out by xiph.org (the people who claim there's no loss in lossy), links like this get posted about and internet people believe them.

There's all kinds of flaws in their assumptions.

Watch the testimonials from musicians over at ponomusic.com and tell me all those people's ears are emotions are deceiving them.

....types the guy surrounded by HD digital screens and HD digital cameras. why the hatred of your hearing? our sense of sound is perhaps our most advanced and nuanced yet we continue to listen to crappy compressed digital audio likes dial-up modems are still around.

you have many false assumptions led by these xiph.org people. what records have they produced? how many recording studios have they been in? where are their grammies?

read and learn, friend -- you gain much by not reducing to 16 bits in the first place. the present is already higher bitrate than that. go outside and listen - that's unlimited resolution.

you also gain much keeping data outside of 20-20k, instead of throwing them away to ship to consumers (as they have been doing for 30 years now).

just because our inner-ear instrumentation doesn't pick it up when soloed, we can hear it there through masking and other hard to quantify natural phenomena.

look up "timbre". have xiph.org or anyone telling you about digital audio explain it and show how it's measured.

here's a hint - it's not. they can't quantify how we can tell the difference between instruments, and they can't quantify how we can tell the difference between how well that instrument is played. how is it the MOST IMPORTANT part of listening to music, or any sound, is the very thing that science just throws out?

the red-book cd standard is built on half-truths and market-speak science from 1978. mp3 was developed for dial-up modems. both standards are ridiculously outdated and the real snake-oil are the people selling you mp3 or compressed digital in 2014.